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AIRCRAFT 


COMPILED BY WORKERS OF THE 
WRITERS’ PROGRAM OF THE WORK 
PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION IN THE 
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA 


-JUNIOR PRESS BOOKS— 

albertXwh itman 

ty 4co 

CHICAGO 1940 







PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 
State-wide Sponsors of the 
Pennsylvania Writers’ Project 

FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY 
John M. Carmody, Administrator 

WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION 
F. C. Harrington, Commissioner 
Florence Kerr, Assistant Commissioner 
Philip Mathews, State Administrator 


PFun 




RECEIVED 


JUN 141940 



COPYRIGHT OFFICE 


Co-sponsored and copyrighted, 1940, by Division of Extension Education 
Board of Public Education, Philadelphia 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





PREFACE 


Aircraft is the eighth in the Children’s Science 
Series. It was prepared by the Philadelphia 
Unit of the Pennsylvania Writers’ Project, 
sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of 
Public Instruction. 

This booklet was written by Mark Bartman. 
It was edited by Katharine Britton of the State 
office staff. 

Acknowledgment is made to Ralph McClarren, 
Associate Director in charge of Aviation, Frank¬ 
lin Institute, Philadelphia, for acting as con¬ 
sultant to assure accuracy of the text and 
illustrations. We are indebted also to D. E. 
Dean, District Traffic Manager, United Air 
Lines, and E. H. Smith, District Sales Manager, 
American Airlines, for furnishing important 
information. 

All illustrations are the work of Edward 
Giordano. 

Conrad C. Lesley 
Acting State Supervisor 



i 


THE BIRD WAS BORN WITH WINGS, BUT IT TOOK HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF 

EFFORT FOR MEN TO BUILD WINGS FOR THEMSELVES. 


























AIRCRAFT 


Sometimes as we look out of the 
window we see a robin or a pigeon flit 
from housetop to housetop. 

Sometimes a humming noise draws 
our attention to the sky, and we glance 
up to see an airplane flying into a cloud. 

The bird was born with wings, and it 
was easy for him to learn to fly. But it 
took hundreds of years of effort for men 
to build wings to carry them far and fast 
through the air. 

Many men felt that they might find 
the secret of flying by watching the way 
the birds moved. Such a man was 


6 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

Leonardo da Vinci, a great artist who 
lived in Italy in the days of Columbus. 
Leonardo would take a bird to the top 
of a hill and fling it into the air. Then 
he would watch carefully, and write down 
his ideas. Leonardo thought of making 
wings that would look like those of a 
bird. They would flap up and down as 
the man who wore them moved his legs. 
Leonardo never made a flying machine. 
But all the work that he did helped other 
men later when they tried to build air¬ 
planes. 

BALLOONS 

As long as men could not figure out 
what kept the birds in the air, they could 
not build an airplane that would rise 
from the ground. But they were study¬ 
ing all the time, hoping to discover some 
other way of flying. 

About one hundred and fifty years ago, 
in France, Joseph and Jacques Mont¬ 
golfier, two brothers, had an idea. They 
had watched smoke and steam float up- 


AIRCRAFT 


7 


ward on a clear day. They knew that 
the smoke floated because it was warm. 
They knew that hot air was lighter than 
cold air and floated just as wood floats 
in water. Maybe this was the way. 

Suppose, the brothers thought, that 
they could capture some hot air in a bag. 
Wouldn’t it keep the bag up in the air? 

They tested this idea at first without 
letting anyone know, and found that it 
worked. Then they were ready to let 
the world see their discovery. 

On a day in June a big crowd gathered. 
A big linen bag was brought out and 
placed over a fire pot. Straw was put 
into the fire pot and lighted. Smoke 
and heated air rose and filled the balloon. 
The balloon began to tug at the ropes 
that held it, and the Montgolfiers let go. 

Up, up went the balloon! A shout 
came from the crowd as the bag seemed 
to get smaller and smaller. But in a 
few minutes the hot air cooled and the 
balloon returned to earth. 


8 


CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 


News of the Montgolfiers’ balloon 
spread quickly. Seeing their success, a 
man named Jacques A. C. Charles de¬ 
cided to try to raise a balloon in another 
way. He would use a gas that was very 
light. This gas was hydrogen. 

His first balloon sailed for three-quar¬ 
ters of an hour overhead, while people 
watched below in the rain. It drifted 
fifteen miles out into the country and 
then floated toward the ground. Seeing 
it coming, the frightened farmers thought 
it was some harmful beast. They ripped 
it to pieces with their pitchforks. 

A short time later, the Montgolfiers 
sent up another balloon. This time they 
used a larger bag, and fixed a basket to 
it. In the basket they put some passen¬ 
gers. Strange passengers they were — 
a duck, a sheep, and a rooster. 

The balloon went up fifteen hundred 
feet and stayed there for eight minutes! 
How the rooster must have squawked 
and the sheep baa-ed and the duck 



THE MONTGOLFIER BALLOON WAS BROUGHT OUT AND PLACED 
OVER A FIRE POT. 












































10 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

quacked when they all found themselves 
up among the clouds. We know they 
had a fight, for when they came down 
the rooster was bruised where the sheep 
had kicked him. 

Montgolfier now thought of placing a 
fire pot in the basket under the balloon. 
If someone would ride in the basket, he 
could keep the fire burning by adding 
more straw. And so the balloon would 
stay up longer. 

Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis 
d’Arlandes were the first to try this new 
idea. As their Montgolfier balloon rose 
from the ground, they fed the fire pot 
with straw. Carefully, holding tight to 
the ropes, they peered over the basket. 
Down below everything looked small. 
The air was clear and fresh. The wind 
tossed their hair about. The sun beamed 
upon them. This was the life! 

Now that these first two men had 
flown, others were ready to try. Jacques 
A. C. Charles went up afterwards in his 


AIRCRAFT 


11 


gas balloon. Charles was full of ideas 
for making better balloons, and he did 
more than anyone else to make balloons 
practical. 

After a while balloons were so much 
better that men could make them go 
up and down as they wished. They 
could keep a balloon floating for a long 
time. 

But that wasn’t enough. Airmen were 
not satisfied. Why, ships were far ahead 
of balloons! A man could steer a ship 
wherever he wanted it to go. But a 
balloon would go only where the wind 
took it. If the wind should blow hard 
in a certain direction, goodness knows 
where the balloon might end. 

Then somebody had a strange idea. 
Why not put oars on a balloon, and row 
it as we would a boat? But of course 
that didn’t work. It must have been 
very funny to see men sitting way up 
there in a basket trying to row the balloon 
through the clouds. 


12 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 


DIRIGIBLES 

When the oars didn’t work, no one 
knew what to try next. For a long time 
there were very few changes in the bal¬ 
loon. But all the time men were working 
on other machines. They learned to 
make more powerful engines. And they 
learned to make a propeller. 

The propeller was first invented for 
boats. It was a piece of wood or metal 
that turned like an electric fan, and was 
fastened to an engine. When the engine 
turned fast, the propeller turned very 
fast, and so it pushed the boat through 
the water. So, airmen thought, why 
couldn’t we do the same thing with a 
balloon? 

When propellers and engines were put 
on balloons, the shape of the balloon was 
changed. Instead of being like a ball, 
it now looked like a cigar. This is called 
streamlining. A cigar-shape is easier to 
push through the air. It is this same 


AIRCRAFT 


13 



THE DIRIGIBLE IS SHAPED LIKE A CIGAR AND HAS AN ENGINE 
AND PROPELLER. 


shape that helps a shark or a submarine 
to slip through the water. A balloon 
shaped like a cigar, and having an engine 
and a propeller, is called a dirigible. 

The first successful flight of a dirigible 
was in 1901. Alberto Santos-Dumont 
flew around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 
His dirigible could be steered in any 


14 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

direction and flew nineteen miles an 
hour. That was even faster than the 
early automobiles. 

The dirigible of today is much larger 
than any of the early balloons. Some 
dirigibles are longer than a city block. 
They can carry heavy loads and can be 
used for long flights. Dirigibles have 
crossed the Atlantic Ocean many times. 
A dirigible from Germany, the Graf 
Zeppelin, flew around the world in 21 
days in 1929. 

THE WRIGHT BROTHERS 

Still the dirigible had many great 
faults. It could not travel fast enough, 
and it was clumsy. It could be used 
only in good weather. And it was not 
safe. Some of the best and most costly 
dirigibles blew up or crashed. 

But airmen for a number of years had 
been working on another idea. Engines 
and propellers were used in dirigibles. 
Why could they not be used in another 


AIRCRAFT 


15 


kind of flying machine? At first the 
machines in which this was tried were 
no good, and there were many accidents. 
The airmen crashed into trees, into fences, 
into the ground. They broke arms and 
legs. Some of them were killed. 

Among the men who were working on 
the new idea were two American brothers, 
Wilbur and Orville Wright. They 
studied the work of Leonardo da Vinci 
and other men. They studied the work 
of Otto and Gustav Lilienthal, who had 
thought, like Leonardo, that the secret 
of flying could be found only by watching 
the birds. The Lilienthals had learned 
a great deal about making machines that 
would float through the air, but their 
machines were gliders and had no 
engines. 

The Wright brothers knew that there 
was much more to be learned about fly¬ 
ing. They made large kites and flew 
them, trying to find out why the kites 
stayed up. They found out that the kite 


16 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

was light, and so the push of the wind 
was enough to keep it in the air. When 
the wind stopped, the kite fell. It would 
fly properly only when the string was 
holding it against the wind. 

Now these two airmen made glider 
kites, guided by strings. Like the Lilien- 
thal gliders, these had wings that did 
not move up and down. They floated 
well. But the Wright brothers felt that 
they had still not found the best shape 
for the wings. 

So they made a wind tunnel, a small 
tunnel through which air could be blown. 
Then they placed wings in the tunnel, 
blew wind through it, and found out 
which shape of wings had more lifting 
power. Then they were able to make a 
better glider. 

At last their glider was ready for an 
engine and a propeller. As the propeller 
pulled the glider forward, air would move 
over and under the wings to keep the 
machine in the air. 


AIRCRAFT 


17 


The Wright brothers tried to get the 
people who made automobiles to make an 
engine for them. But everyone laughed 
at the idea that an engine could be used 
in a flying machine. So the brothers 
made an engine of their own. 

To the engine they fastened two pro¬ 
pellers with blades like those of an elec¬ 
tric fan. The engine turned the pro¬ 
pellers. The faster the propellers turned, 
the harder they pulled. Then the engine 



THE LILIENTHAL BROTHERS HAD MADE GLIDERS, LIKE THIS 
ONE, WHICH HAD NO ENGINES. 




\ 


THIS IS ONE OF THE FIRST AIRPLANES MADE BY THE WRIGHT BROTHERS. 































AIRCRAFT 


19 


and propellers were put in a glider, a 
strange-looking machine when we think 
of our newest planes. 

In 1903 the Wright brothers went to 
a place called Kitty Hawk, in North 
Carolina. And here their machine made 
its first trip. This was the first flight in 
history of a winged machine driven by a 
motor and controlled by the man who 
flew in it. It went only one hundred 
and twenty feet, about as far as we can 
throw a stone. 

But men had the secret now. Some 
day they would be able to fly to the ends 
of the world! The great dream had come 
true. 

BUILDING BETTER WINGS 

The Wright brothers kept on working 
to make the airplane better. Other men 
were working, too. They put small 
wheels on the bottom of the plane so 
that it could roll along the ground and 
gather speed to rise into the air. And it 





































































































































































































































































































22 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 

could roll slowly to a stop when it came 
back to the ground, instead of having to 
stop suddenly. 

The Wright brothers’ plane had two 
wings, and so it was called a biplane. 
Soon men were making planes with only 
one wing, and these were called mono¬ 
planes. 

Six years after the first flight, airplanes 
were so much better and safer that a 
Frenchman named Bleriot was able to 
fly in a monoplane all the way across the 
English Channel, which separates Eng¬ 
land from France. Not long after that 
Glenn H. Curtiss, an American, flew an 
airplane from Albany to New York City, 
about 150 miles. 

By this time governments of many 
countries had begun to buy airplanes for 
their armies. When the World War 
came in 1914 many ways were discovered 
of using planes to fight the enemy. Then 
planes became very important. 

One thing the War showed was that 


AIRCRAFT 


23 


wooden planes were not so strong as 
planes should be. Metal was tried in 
place of wood, and was found to be much 
better. Today most planes are made of a 
material containing mostly aluminum, 
the metal used for many kitchen pots 
and pans. 

By the end of the War many new 
things had been discovered about flying. 
Men were ready now to use planes for 
something besides stunt flights and fight¬ 
ing. Our Government began to use its 
planes to carry mail. And the more the 
airplane was used, the more men worked 
to improve it. .Flying machines were 
getting better by leaps and bounds. 

As airplanes became better, men began 
to make longer and faster flights in them. 
But the airplane was not yet so safe as 
it is today. Many people thought that 
pilots were fools to risk their lives, be¬ 
cause the airplane would never be of 
any real use to men. But the pilots kept 
on flying. A number of American and 


24 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

British pilots flew across the Atlantic 
Ocean. 

One clear day in 1927, a young man 
named Charles A. Lindbergh left New 
York, winging his way eastward over 
the sea. And he took no one with him! 
Before this flight no one had ever gone 
alone. Newspapers called Lindbergh 
the Flying Fool. 

A day and a half later he landed in 
Paris. He had traveled 3,600 miles alone 
to reach his goal. And he had made 
the trip in one-quarter the time of the 
fastest ships. 

When people saw that one man had 
come safely through a non-stop ocean 
flight they knew that airplanes could 
become useful to many people. Other 
men began to fly across the ocean. And 
soon it seemed as safe to make a trip 
like that as to cross the country by train. 

Ocean air travel was made safer, too, 
by improving the seaplane, or flying boat. 
In place of wheels, seaplanes have small 


AIRCRAFT 


25 


boats fastened under their bodies. These 
keep the planes floating on the water. 
The small boats are known as pontoons, 
or floats. In most seaplanes today, the 
whole body is built as a float. If any¬ 
thing goes wrong with the seaplane while 
it is flying over the ocean, it can land 
right on the water. And it can take oft 
from the water. 

Seaplanes hold many of the world speed 
records. This is because the water gives 
them a large space in which to take off 
and land at very high speeds. 

Some planes are made with both wheels 
and floats. So they can take off from 
either land or water. These are called 
amphibian planes. 

When airmen test new planes and 
new ideas for planes, the pilots carry 
parachutes in case the plane should not 
work right. A parachute is like a very 
big umbrella. It is usually strapped in 
a square pack on the back or under the 
body as a cushion. There is a little ring 


26 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 


on the outside. When the ring is pulled, 
the parachute unfolds. The person who 
has jumped from the plane goes sailing 
down to the ground without being hurt. 
So the race to build better wings does 
not cost lives as it did among early air¬ 
men. 


AIRPLANES IN WAR 
Since the World War all countries 
have been building fleets of airplanes to 
be used as powerful fighting machines. 
Airplanes in war are now more dangerous 
in some ways than armies and navies. 

The biggest war plane is the bombing 
plane, or bomber. It may be large 
enough to hold at least 20 men. The 
bomber is really a small battleship of 
the air. Besides bombs, it carries ma¬ 
chine guns and small cannon. Its 
cannon are used against enemy planes. 
The bombs are dropped, and blow up 
when they hit something, often doing 
much damage. 



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A BOMBER, BATTLESHIP OF THE AIR, WITH PURSUIT PLANES PROTECTING IT 

















































28 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 


To fight the bombers, men built small 
planes that could fly through the air 
at breath-taking speed. These pursuit 
planes carry only one or two men, and 
two or more machine guns. They dart 
and dive and twist and pester the enemy 
plane, like hornets buzzing around the 
head of a man. 

There are some planes used in war 
only for spying on the enemy. These 
are observation planes. They carry 
cameras, so they can take pictures of 
the enemy country. 

For their warplanes, some countries 
have built floating airplane garages. 
These are large ships with flat decks on 
the top. They are called aircraft carriers. 
The aircraft carrier can be moved any¬ 
where on the ocean, and so the planes 
always have a place to return to for rest, 
fuel, and repairs. 

Even parachutes are important in war 
today. They can be used to land soldiers 
right in an enemy’s country! Airplanes 


AIRCRAFT 


29 



THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER IS A FLOATING GARAGE FOR AIRPLANES. 


fly the soldiers to the right spot, and the 
soldiers jump. The parachutes open and 
the men float to the ground, to help their 
own army by scouting, or even by blow¬ 
ing up railroads and bridges. 










30 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

Parachutes are also used to drop mines. 
Mines are bombs that float in the ocean. 
As soon as a ship touches them, they 
blow up and damage the ship. 

AIRPLANES IN PEACE 

But men use their wings to do good 
things too. Today planes can spread 
poison over fields where insects are eat¬ 
ing crops. They are sent out over our 
forests every day to look for fires. They 
have been used in exploring the North 
Pole and the South Pole. 

Many times an airplane has been the 
hero of a story. There was a plane that 
made a flight over the ice fields to Nome, 
Alaska, to bring medicine to sick people 
who were caught there in the snow. Not 
long ago our Navy sent airplanes across 
the Mississippi floodlands to drop food 
to stranded people. 

But the greatest amount of useful work 
is in mail and passenger service. In 
the early days of air travel, only mail 


AIRCRAFT 


31 


was carried. But soon passengers and 
express were being carried too. 

When commercial air transportation 
started, in 1919, the air roads, or air¬ 
ways, of all the world covered only 3,200 
miles. By 1939 there were more than 
71,000 miles of airways in the United 
States alone. 

The airlines of the United States cover 
more miles and carry more passengers 
than the airlines of all other countries 
together. There are almost 300 big trans¬ 
port planes making regular flights on 
our airlines. They carry about two mil¬ 
lion passengers a year now, and the 
number is growing all the time. They 
carry thousands of tons of mail and ex¬ 
press. They flew almost seventy million 
miles in 1938. 

But the airlines do not carry all the air 
traffic by any means. In 1938 there were 
almost 11,000 private planes in our coun¬ 
try. Many of these are used to carry 
sightseers or people on pleasure rides, 


32 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

or even business men on long trips. In 
1938 they carried more than half as many 
paying passengers as the airlines. Some 
private planes are used for carrying small 
express loads. Altogether private planes 
carried more than a million and a half 
passengers in 1938. They flew almost 
twice as many miles as all the airlines 
put together. 

With all this flying we might expect 
many accidents. But there have been 
fewer accidents year by year. In 1929 a 
pilot on the airlines could expect an 
accident of some sort every two hundred 
thousand miles. But in 1939, accidents 
happened only every two million miles 
of flight. Most of these accidents were 
not serious. On the four biggest air¬ 
lines there were no accidents of any 
sort. 

But safety in the air has been won 
only by hard work. In the first place, 
airplanes had to be made better. The 
airplane in which we fly today is very 



THE AIRPLANES IN WHICH WE FLY TODAY ARE VERY DIFFERENT 
FROM THOSE WHICH CARRIED THE MAIL IN 1919. 










34 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 

different from the one which carried mail 
in 1919. That was a small biplane with 
room only for mail and pilot. The place 
where the pilot sat, the cockpit, was open 
and not protected. The plane traveled 
about 100 miles an hour. 

The airplanes in which we first began 
to fly passengers were not much better 
than the first mail plane. The airlines 
were still using an open cockpit biplane, 
which could carry only one or two 
passengers. 

But by 1930 big transport planes were 
being made. Each had three motors, with 
three propellers, and carried many 
people. Some of them were monoplanes, 
though biplane transports were still built. 
The monoplane was a slim, powerful ma¬ 
chine. People must have thought it 
would be a long time before there would 
be a better plane than this one. 

But in three years there were other 
great changes. The wing of the transport 
monoplanes was carried under the body, 


AIRCRAFT 


35 


instead of above or on a level with it. 
They were low-wing monoplanes. In¬ 
stead of three engines, they now had 
two. These two engines had more power, 
but were less noisy than three engines. 
They were faster, and they worked to¬ 
gether better. The propellers had three 
blades, for men had discovered that three 
blades gave more power. 

But the greatest change was that the 
new planes were like small floating 
hotels. When meal time came, there 
was a good dinner served. When night 
came, there were comfortable beds. The 
passengers slept quietly while the plane 
swept through the skies. 

The new transports carried 21 passen¬ 
gers, and a crew of three. They flew 
three miles a minute on a long trip. 
That is 180 miles an hour! 

All the time airplanes were becoming 
more and more streamlined. The twin- 
motored sleeper transport of 1939 was a 
beautiful thing to see. But airmen were 


36 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

still not satisfied. They planned a giant 
transport that would carry from 30 to 40 
passengers, and a crew of five. This 
giant will look much like the twin- 
motored planes, except that it will have 
four motors. An extra wheel, placed in 
the front, will give added safety, for it 
will guard against the plane’s tipping 
over when it lands. The plane will fly 
at 225 miles an hour! 

Meanwhile, airmen had been working 
on seaplanes, too, and in 1935 these began 
to make regular flights over the Pacific. 
These flying boats are the greatest giants 
of them all. Like the newest of the land 
planes, they are four-motored mono¬ 
planes. But the wing is carried over 
the body, instead of under it. The biggest 
of these can carry 50 to 70 passengers, 
a crew of eight, and tons of mail. They 
can fly almost 5,000 miles without land¬ 
ing, and passengers eat well and sleep 
well. 




THE FLYING BOATS ARE THE GREATEST GIANTS OF THEM ALL. 












38 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 


Large planes have replaced small ones 
on the airlines, though some ten-passen¬ 
ger planes are still used. But for private 
flying people want smaller planes. They 
cannot afford to buy the large ones, or 
to fly them. 

There are small, safe planes that a 
person can buy without a great deal of 
money. Some of these have come to be 
known as flivver planes, because they 
cost so much less to buy and to run, just 
as the flivver auto did. The flivver bi¬ 
planes seat only one or two persons. 

The private flyer may also get a plane 
for three people, or five. These larger 
planes are usually monoplanes. For the 
monoplane is replacing the biplane, and 
there are fewer biplanes made each 
year. 

Men have built certain planes that 
would be safe for special uses. One of 
these, the autogiro, looks very different 
from an ordinary plane. Extending out¬ 
ward above its body are long thin blades 


AIRCRAFT 


39 


that turn like a windmill. These lift 
the autogiro, and so they are actually 
moving wings. The old autogiros had 
four moving wings, and one small wing 
like the wing of an ordinary monoplane. 
The new autogiros have only three mov¬ 
ing wings and no other wing at all. 

The moving windmill wings permit the 
autogiro to fly up and down at a very 
steep angle, and to land on a small space. 
If the engine which drives the front pro¬ 
peller stops, the windmill wings bring 
the autogiro safely to the ground. An 
autogiro can be used for landing freight 
or mail on large roofs of city buildings. 
In some places autogiros are used to carry 
light loads into cities from nearby land¬ 
ing fields. 

A man can buy any one of the thou¬ 
sands of planes made yearly — biplanes 
or monoplanes with open cockpit or 
closed, land or sea planes —and know 
that it will carry him safely wherever 
he wants to go. Our Government takes 


40 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 


care of that. It will not let any planes 
be flown until they are tested for safety. 

The work of the Government is the 
second important thing that helps to make 
flying safe. The Government not only 
sees that planes are safe. It also sees 
that the people who fly them know how 
to fly. 


PILOTS 

In order to fly a plane, a pilot must 
get a license from the Government. The 
kind of license he gets depends on the 
kind of flying he is able to do. 

If a pilot does more than his license per¬ 
mits, he is breaking the rules. Then he 
will not be permitted to fly at all for a cer¬ 
tain length of time. 

To get any kind of airplane license a 
person must be 16 years old and have 
his parents’ consent. He must be 21 
years old to get a license without his 
parents’ consent. He must have a good 



THE NEW AUTOGIRO HAS ONLY THREE MOVING WINGS AND 
NO ORDINARY AIRPLANE WINGS AT ALL. 































































































42 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 

character, and he must pass a physical 
test. He must know the air traffic rules 
made by the Government. 

Besides these things, for each license 
the pilot must have done a certain 
number of hours of flying. He must 
pass a written test and a flying test. 
For each higher grade of license, tests 
get harder and more hours of flying time 
are needed. 

For a Student Pilot license, the student 
must have done eight hours of flying 
with a teacher. For a Solo Pilot license, 
with which he can fly alone, he must 
have done five hocus of solo flying. For 
a Private Pilot license, which permits 
him to fly friends without pay, 35 hours 
of solo flying are needed. 

The pilot needs 60 hours of solo flying 
for a Limited Commercial license, which 
permits him to fly passengers for pay 
within an area named on the license. 
And he must have 200 hours to be a 
Commercial Pilot. Then he can fly 


AIRCRAFT 


43 


passengers all over the country, but he 
cannot be chief pilot on an airline. 

The Airline Pilot must be 23 years old 
and a high school graduate. He must 
know all the air traffic rules. He must 
know all about why planes fly and how 
to fly them, how to tell what the weather 
will be, how to fly at night or in bad 
weather with instruments, and many 
other things. His tests are the hardest of 
all. He must already have a Commercial 
Pilot’s license, and he must have had 
1,200 hours of solo flight. He is a pilot 
that we can trust, and the biggest trans¬ 
port plane is safe in his hands. 

A pilot can also get a license to teach, 
or to fly by instruments. And a man who 
is interested in planes can learn to do 
some of the other work connected with 
them, such as taking care of the engines 
or running the airlines. 

There are schools in all parts of the 
country which teach about planes and 
flying. And every year the Government 


44 CHILDREN’S SCIENCE SERIES 

picks out a number of young men who 
will make good pilots, and teaches them 
free. 

Even to fly a glider a license is needed. 
But for this a person must be only 14 
years old, and strong and well. Then 
he must make a certain number of glider 
flights and pass tests on air traffic rules 
for gliders. 

AIRWAYS AND AIRPORTS 

With all these rules about pilots, and 
air traffic, and plane strength, our 
Government protects the people who fly. 
But the airlines, too, are helping to make 
flying safe. They know that they can 
get large numbers of passengers only 
by making it safe and comfortable to 
travel by air. 

Every air route is planned carefully 
to travel the safest way. The planes 
do not always fly in a straight line from 
one place to another. Sometimes they 


AIRCRAFT 45 

must turn to detour bad storms and very 
high winds. 

We might think a pilot would have a 
hard time following a road through the 
air. But the whole air route is marked 
for him. All the time there are many 
radio stations sending out signals which 
the pilot hears. These radio beams guide 
him along the airway, just as a white 
line guides us along a road in our auto¬ 
mobile. Even if the weather is cloudy 
and he cannot see the ground, the pilot 
can find his way by the radio beam. 

On clear nights the pilot also sees 
lights flashing every ten or fifteen miles, 



ONE OF OUR GREAT AIRPORTS LOOKS LIKE THIS AT NIGHT. 


46 CHILDREN'S SCIENCE SERIES 


to help to keep him on the right route. 
These are called beacon lights. 

Along the airway there are certain 
places where passengers can get on or 
off the plane. These are called termi¬ 
nals, or airports. An airport is a busy 
place. All day long at a big airport there 
may be planes coming in from many 
distant places. 

A good airport has to be near roads 
and railroads. It must be level and the 
ground must be firm so that the planes 
can take off easily. There should be no 
poles, fences, buildings, or trees to keep 
the pilots from having a clear view. And 
so that there will be no accidents as 
planes take off and land, a large airport 
must have towers from which traffic may 
be controlled. 

The airport must have a weather sta¬ 
tion, too, so that the pilots may be warned 
of storms, high winds, rain and snow. 
If the weather is bad, the planes will 
not fly. 


AIRCRAFT 


47 


Less than forty years have passed since 
men first began to fly. Yet today there 
are thousands of airports in the United 
States. 

As America goes ahead, she will go on 
wings, swiftly and surely, to the hum of 
a motor, the roar of a propeller. 
















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